Become part of a global celebration of creativity, courage, and collaboration on International Dot Day. Formed in response to The Dot written by Peter H. Reynolds, this day is set aside to rekindle and inspire the power of creativity in all of us. Sign up for free to download the Educators Handbook. Explore the site to find many pictures of Dot Day in action. Don't forget to follow International Dot Day on Facebook and Twitter to stay in touch with all of the latest updates from around the world. Sign up to become a member of the Dot Day Community and celebrate with others around the world each September! Some of the videos are on YouTube. If your district blocks YouTube, they may not be viewable. You could always view them at home and bring them to class "on a stick" to share. Use a tool such as KeepVid, reviewed here, to download the videos from YouTube.

In the Classroom

Although the official International Dot Day is in September, use ideas from the site to inspire creativity and collaboration throughout the year. Read The Dot to students and encourage them to collaborate ways they can make their mark in the world. Challenge older students to explore their place in the world through the use of a blog. If you are beginning the process of integrating technology, have students create blogs sharing their learning and understanding using Pen.io, reviewed here. This blog creator requires no registration. Take this a step further by joining ePals, reviewed here, and sharing your Dot Day activities with your global friends. Consider following International Dot Day on Facebook and Twitter to stay in touch with all of the latest updates from around the world.

Share positive moments and increase your happiness! Share by describing your happy moment, upload a picture (not required), and place it in categories you create, such as working out, family, and more. Click Share to share with others, including on Twitter or Facebook. Why use categories? If you are lacking motivation for working out, viewing your positive messages from before can definitely help! Connect with others and comment on their happy moments! Read helpful tips to center you on happiness, find mini-courses, and use daily reminders to increase your happiness. Read the many articles on your journey to a happier YOU! This site/app is easy to use with today's busy lives, and interactivity is grounded in actual science.

In the Classroom

With testing, social pressure, and the desire to do well, use Happier in class to celebrate the small steps and successes on which students should be focusing. Teach students to identify positives along the way, no matter what the test or situation's outcome. Consider asking what did you learn from the situation? Identify categories that encompass all of the student's lives and focus on finding happy moments in all areas. Be sure to use this yourself! Find the positives in every facet of your day building happiness day by day. Psychology and Sociology classes can use this as an experiment about happiness, collecting student or family data through the year.

Reddit democratizes news through voting on the headlines that matter to you. Though informative, it is not eye catching. Simply "upvote" or "downvote" a headline to bring it higher (or lower) in the news column. Curate the best stuff on Reddit by creating a Subreddit. Note: New accounts are unable to make a Subreddit without time spent being active in the community. Search or view the various Subreddits for a topic of your choice. To make a Subreddit, choose "Create your own Subreddit." On the left-hand side are the boxes for your Subreddits (under the Multireddit label). Subscribe to various threads of interest through the subscribe button. As you subscribe to the threads, your Reddit page will change to show these subscriptions. Some threads are Ask Me Anything (AMA), and the poster will answer when you ask. As Reddit is Social Networking, be sure to look at the comments of others before sharing with students. Since you can curate your own topics, this may not be a major concern.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Use Reddit to show the uniqueness and value of topics by the upvotes and downvotes. Also discuss the thinking behind the upvotes and downvotes. Comments to the posts offer more detailed information to portions of the topic that can lead to different points of view, deeper analysis, and discussion of related topics. Since the average person and professionals use Reddit, students can ask a question to get crowdsourced answers such as "How to write a better term paper?" View the various topics that have high or poor ratings and determine whether rating is based upon facts or opinion. Students can find various topics for term papers or research by viewing the Reddit topics. Reddit is also popular for finding peer review journals and tutorials.

The Learning Toolbox contains tools and resources for students, parents, and teachers for helping middle and high school students with learning difficulties. Choose from one of the three sections to begin as a student, parent, or teacher. Locate strategies for teaching and assessing students in the teacher portion of the site. Options for parents include information about teaching strategies as well as advocacy information for finding the best educational options for their student. Find tools for organization, test taking, and much more that offer help directly to students.

In the Classroom

Although this site states it is for working with learning difficulties, much of the information offers support to all students. Use the tips found in the student section to help any student struggling with time management, organization, or comprehension. Share this site with parents as a resource for explicit directions on helping students who struggle with these issues.

Take a look at what leading experts consider the 25 moments that changed 20th century America in this interesting list from Time. Click through the slideshow or view all moments in one list. Each event, listed in chronological order, also includes a summary and photograph. A few also include a video clip. Click on the links at the bottom of each moment to view more information from the Time Vault.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Use this site to introduce any lesson or unit on 20th century America with an interactive whiteboard or projector. At the end of a 20th century unit, have students create their own list individually or as a group before sharing this site. This site contains many events that may be unfamiliar to most younger Americans, use it as an opportunity to explore these events further. Have students create an annotated image including text boxes and related links using a tool such as Thinglink, reviewed here, to share information from different events. This is a good informational reading source to help meet your Common Core Standards.

Do you need a checklist for students to use before submitting multimedia projects? This site provides a printable list (pdf) that covers several areas such as mechanics, documentation, and quality of content. Check off each item on the list, multiply the weight, and come up with the total points.

In the Classroom

Use this checklist as it is or as a starting point for creating your own rubric for any project. Not sure how to build your own rubric? See Rubrics to the Rescue, here. Share with students when assigning any project and ask them to complete it and turn it in with the project when done. Create a link on your web page or blog so students (and parents) can access information from home. Have students make a multimedia presentation using one of the many TeachersFirst Edge tools, reviewed here.

Bill's Games offers a variety of free online activities and puzzles. Although this site is "plain vanilla," there are classic activities that offer challenges for all ages. Scroll through the home page to find puzzles, board games, mazes, and word games. Each activity includes directions for play and many offer options for difficulty levels.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Share and demonstrate the activities on an interactive whiteboard. Create a link on classroom computers to use as a center. Challenge students to increase difficulty levels in games and activities. Ask students to journal about their problem-solving process when playing games and activities.

Stupeflix is closing down August 31, 2018. At that time you will not be able to access any of your media stored on Stupeflix. Stupeflix is now closed to new users. Stupeflix is a video creation application. Create and post videos and photographs to impress others and push your production skills to new levels. Drag and drop your images into the appropriate sequence or import from Facebook, Instagram, and more. Easily add additional text or make edits. Add more than one audio clip to the creation (though there is only one soundtrack available); upload others from your computer. Choose from a variety of themes: Snowflakes, Scrapbook, Blueprint, and others. Follow the easy to use directions to create an amazing video! Share on Facebook, Twitter, email the URL, or copy the embed code.
Be aware: Stupeflix is closing. Stupeflix is no longer accepting new users. Current users can access the site until August 31, 2018.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Create a video montage of images taken in the classroom. Use to show a process, explain an experiment, discuss data collected, create club or class movies about happenings throughout the year, and much more. Use this tool as a creative and easy alternative to boring slideshow presentations. Introduce the major points of a topic through images and added text. Use this site to make commercials, science fair previews, and animated shorts in any content area. Have students make "advertisements" for an organism or a literary character. Make a travel commercial for a country being studied or for cultural sites in a world language class. Be sure to share the presentations on your projector or interactive whiteboard.

This free Toolkit from Microsoft is an excellent resource for high-quality materials to complement your Internet safety unit. Download PDFs and brochures about digital citizenship for any age group. Find topics titled Digital Citizenship Begins with You Factsheet, Help Kids Stand Up to Online Bullying Brochure, DigiDucks Big Decision Book Sample, and more.

In the Classroom

Use the PDFs in your class or during professional development. Take advantage of the many free resources and ideas on this site. Bring some technology into the presentations by challenging small groups of students to transform the PDFs presentation into an interactive learning tool for younger students or their peers. Ask them to add questions, feedback, more images, etc. so the PDF becomes a student-created tutorial on an aspect of digital citizenship. Of course, students will be graded on the accuracy of their information as well as their creativity. Think of it as inverse teaching. Have students extract the information (with proper credit of course) and create their tutorial using ePubEditor, reviewed here, or Zeetings, reviewed here. Prepare a rubric before you start or use our Rubrics to the Rescue
to find one that shares your expectations for this project.

Heatmap News provides a quick look at the latest world news using hotspots and news provided by Google News and Google Earth Maps. Click on any of the hotspots to read short articles about events in that area. Use the drop-down box labeled Date to include only the last hour, today, this week, or any date back to August 18, 2014.

In the Classroom

Share Heatmap News on an interactive whiteboard or projector as part of any current events lessons. Create a link to this site on your class website and have students find news and then research to learn more about an event. A side benefit of using Heatmap News for your current events is that students will become more knowledgeable about world geography. Challenge students to use a tool such as Zeemaps, reviewed here, to create a map with images and an audio recording for what they learned about an event where the story takes place. Students can add details for news from around the world.

GoConqr (formerly ExamTime) is a crowdsourcing site for uploading and sharing class notes, flashcards, quizzes, and more. Free membership offers you access to 3 subjects and 20 public resources. Sign up using your email account to begin using GoConqr's features. Be sure to watch the video tutorials for creating resources for your personal page. Use the search feature to find and access resources already designed and shared on the site. If your district blocks YouTube, they may not be viewable. You could always view them at home and bring them to class "on a stick" to share. Use a tool such as KeepVid, reviewed here, to download the videos from YouTube.

In the Classroom

Share GoConqr with students to build and use study skills. Although an individual can use the site on their own, it is best to use it as a sharing site for study information. Encourage students to sign up and build a network of friends for creating and sharing resources. Learning support teachers and teachers of gifted-but-disorganized students will want to share the tools and encourage their students to create groups and collaborate with their peers. Have students create review activities and swap them with peers. Use this tool with colleagues to co-create materials to use with content units or materials to use for flipping the classroom. Use this tool for professional development.

Siftr is a social photo sharing site for students to post, tag, and describe their surroundings based on a teacher-directed prompt or activity. Explore already created Siftrs through a keyword search or browse through recent and popular activity. Create an account to begin your own Siftrs. Upload a picture with a brief description and tag with one of the five selected themes. Share Siftr with others to contribute their photos and observations, all tagged and uploaded to a map.

In the Classroom

Browse through Siftr for ideas on how others use this site for photo sharing in the classroom. Create Siftrs to demonstrate different stages of plant growth, identify landforms around the world, inspire creative writing, or share items that can be recycled. The possibilities are endless!

Build interactive, map-based stories without coding skills using the Odyssey open source library. Click Create Story to begin and follow the prompts to choose a template for slides, scrolling, or an animated story template. Add story content, images, links, and more within the "sandbox." When finished, publish directly to GetHub, download, or share as iFrame to embed directly into your blog or website.

In the Classroom

Most users will find a bit of a learning curve to working with Odyssey, click on the three bars on the left top of the home page to find the Quick Start Guide tutorial for using the site. Share this site with tech-savvy students so that they can become experts and help others become familiar with using the site. Use Odyssey for creating map-based stories based on works of literature, important events in history, or mapping scientific discoveries. Odyssey is perfect for use with gifted students when creating multimedia presentations.

Explore and discover quotes for any occasion at The Quote Garden. Search through this extensive collection of quotes by topic, holiday, or special occasion. Links for each topic directs you to a list of quotations with author credits.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Make a shortcut to The Quote Garden on classroom computers or include it on your class web page for students to use as a resource for projects. Encourage leadership, hope, and inspiration! Use quotes as a theme for writing prompts or even to relate to the theme of a story. Have students find quotes as examples of figurative language. Add quotes to end of year slide shows or videos. Use the quotes to inspire personal or classroom mission statements. Have students include a quote when turning in work, and explain how it inspired or helped them. Add music or art to explain a quote. During the first week of the school year, share this site with students. Challenge students to choose a personal "quote of the year" to set the tone for their goals. Have students put the quote in their notebook, folder, or on their device desktop. Choose a few quotes to hang around your classroom. Show students how to keep favorite quotes in an idea bin where they keep thoughts, thoughtful questions, and pieces of inspiration. Here are two tools you might like for an idea bin for middle or high school students: Thoughtboxes, reviewed here, and The Sketchbook Project, reviewed here. An idea bin collector for primary and elementary students could be Padlet, reviewed here.

Quickly create and share engaging social media images with Pablo - no registration required! Choose the shape of your image to match the platform where you will share, namely wide for Twitter and Facebook or square for Instagram. Add text and edit the font type, size, and colors. Select a background image from Pablo's many options or upload your own image. When finished, use links to Tweet, share on Facebook, or download and use any way that you like.

In the Classroom

Engage your class by creating a teaser for upcoming units using an image created with Pablo. Create images with favorite quotes as an introduction to any lesson. At the beginning of the year, print out images with inspirational quotes to put on bulletin boards. Share what you created on your website or blog. Have students create an image to "introduce" themselves to the class during the first week of school. Link or embed the introductory presentations in your class wiki, and have others guess who is portrayed. Use this tool to create short story summaries.

In the Classroom

Share an animated GIF to get student's attention! A cat reading a book is one way to begin reading time! Show any science concept a student should look at several times to see every aspect of the event. Some ideas to search for might be the development of an organism, cell division, a chemical reaction, formation of stars, or a bullet in slow motion. Do you want to reveal portions of a video outlining the travels of historic expeditions, addition of the states to the US, or any other historical event captured in a video? Use a looping animated GIF! Every subject could use one of these GIFs to generate interest in a class activity or new content. Use these examples as inspiration to create your own animated GIF's using GIFMaker, reviewed here.

Create an interactive categorization activity with Dustbin. Give the activity a title and begin adding categories. Add items in up to four different categories. When finished, drag and drop items as quickly as possible into the correct bin. Use the provided links to share the activity, embed into a blog or web page, or print it. Use password protection if desired to limit access. Click the question mark on the bottom right toolbar, and scroll down that page to find many templates for inspiration or use.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Develop Dustbin activities to review any topic and save for use as a classroom center. Have students create review Dustbins as a study tool. Be sure to demonstrate how to make and share Dustbin before having students set up their own. Ideas for categorization activities are unlimited, but can include categorizing types of animals, literary elements in novels, habitats, characteristics of geographic areas, and much more.

Design professional looking front pages for a newspaper with this tool. Simply fill in the pertinent information (headline, date, place, and more) and an image. Share via URL, Twitter, or download to your computer. There is also the ability to save a blank template. Be sure to view the several samples available, and click on the little question mark at the end of the title to see ideas for use of this tool. No registration is necessary.

In the Classroom

Assess students prior knowledge by creating a Breaking News piece to introduce a new unit. Ask students to fill in an interactive KWL chart from Holt, reviewed here, or discuss in small groups what they know about the topic. Use in presentation slides by downloading the image from your computer. Then upload the image to a slide presentation creator such as Slidestory, reviewed here. Suggest to students that they do the same for their presentations. Use as a timeline of events for lab experiment, a novel study, historical event, and more. You might want to think about using this tool as a storyboard for digital storytelling; printing blank templates would work well for storyboarding.

Conduct virtual conferences with up to 25 people at one time with Free Conference Call. Instantly share your screen during online calls for participant viewing. Other features allow for recording and sharing meetings when finished. After creating an account, follow instructions for inviting participants and setting up the conference call. This tool works on any device with a modern web browser and Internet access.

In the Classroom

Use Free Conference Call to set up virtual parent/teacher conferences with participants located anywhere in the world. This is especially useful when multiple teachers are involved or when parents may not reside in the same location. Share your screen as needed to provide information on assessments and student work.

The Critical Reading Study Guide offers an interactive worksheet for summarizing, reviewing, and studying any reading assignment. Fill in the information for each of the six questions, then click print to create a hard copy of your responses. In addition to the questionnaire, this site offers several other ideas to promote critical reading such as characteristics of critical readers and questions to ask yourself while reading.

In the Classroom

All core content teachers can use this interactive worksheet to help students understand their text book and other informational reading. Creating a study guide such as this will help students stay focused on the reading. Share this site on an interactive whiteboard or projector with students and discuss the information presented. Have students complete the questionnaire as part of any reading assignment. Share a link to this site on your class web page or blog for students and parents to use as an at-home resource. Use student responses to create a poster with an online poster creator, such as Fotojet, reviewed here.